From past August 27th to November 25th, the Venice Biennale of Architecture, titled “Common Ground”, is open to visitors; and so is SpainLab, the Spanish pavilion, in which we were invited to take part for this edition.

The curators Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa proposed us to show the way we work, according to the “lab” approach of the pavilion. We decided to do this with a single project, Dreamhamar, which incorporates many of the concepts, objectives and means that Ecosistema Urbano has been working on and is currently experimenting with: urban development, advocacy, citizen participation, workshops, digital tools, design, open culture, network learning, urban actions, network design…

We understand the role of the architect and urban planner is undergoing a huge transformation according to the new needs of contemporary society. This forces us to redevelop a whole “set of tools” to be able to meet these new needs and challenges. Under the title of DREAM YOUR CITY we explain these new tools or methods we are dealing with and the way we think network design can be applied to socially engaged designs for the creation of city spaces. This 90 seconds movie illustrates how we understand network design and how we specifically implemented it in Hamar or how it could be applied somewhere else.

Video by ecosistema urbano + forma.co

Considering the ephemeral nature of the exhibition, we chose to make it a simple, lightweight installation, consistent with the way we are used to work in this kind of projects: trying to get the most out of minimal resources and low-cost means. Almost all materials needed for the installation were taken to Venice by ourselves, as checked-in luggage.

The paint that covers the floor and the walls, made by urban artists Boamistura, transforms the perception and character of the space with a single intervention, bringing to the hall the look and feel of the previous PaintHamar urban action in Stortorget, the main square of Hamar. The natural light, the seats integrated on the floor and the trampoline all recall that outdoor public space and invite visitors to occupy it with their minds and bodies.

Seven small screens show videos telling different aspects of the network design process we deployed in Hamar, giving the visitor some brief glimpses of the variety and complexity of the project without trying to explain it thoroughly –which will be done soon in a more suitable format.

A series of real-scale pictures of various day-to-day objects that were used during Dreamhamar, some of them being physically on display, show the variety of work/life situations that the team had to cope with while working in this project both remotely from Madrid and locally in Norway. From the more disciplinary tools to objects related to social life or cultural events, they evoke the changing role of the urban professional.

Here are some quick photos we shot during the process, taken from the Flickr gallery.

We invite you to visit the installation, have some fun jumping on the trampoline and imagining you are in Stortorget, and share your thoughts –and your photos!– with us on Twitter, Facebook or just down here in the comments.

Today we introduce you to Anja Humljan, a young architect with a very diverse profile and an interesting background, who is doing an internship with us and will be contributing with some posts for the blog while working on her own research. Here, she tells us more about herself:

I am a freelance architect from Slovenia, passionatelly pursuing projects around the world – from New York to Madrid, Australia and Denmark, with Tokyo on the to-do list. To fulfill my interests in interdisciplinary and multimedia approach to architecture I studied classical architecture in Slovenia, photo-media, video arts and sound recording in Australia and digital design in Denmark. Together with Danish colleagues we designed an interactive pavilion NoRA exhibited and built at Venice Architectural Biennial 2006.

Anja Humljan, photo: Irena Herak

For the past ten years, I have been investigating various fields that at first glance have no connection with architecture: I explored emotional expressionism and dynamic relationship between individual and space through modern dance and ballet. While living in New York City, I was taking part in dance intensives with world’s most renowned modern dance companies – Alvin Ailey and Complexions. Studying vocal techniques and sound recording for six months at Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, working as voice actor, narrator and radio presenter made me sensible for the sonic quality of our contemporary environment, discovering the importance of sound and its immense potential within architecture. By consistently teaching and practicing yoga for twelve years I have been investigating proprioception and pareidolia and learned how to strengthen individual’s sub consciousness via physical training, meditation and discipline.

SPACE POTENTIAL: URBAN YOGA AND VIDEO METHOD PLES On the threshold between all the respected fields and architecture, I placed a conceptual platform Space potential. It responds to my questions on space and architecture: what is crucial for architecture today, what needs to be pursued in the architectural practice, what we should not give up on, so that architecture will continue to exist and work as architecture. I believe we perceive and experience space in a complex way: objective qualities form physical aspects of space (geometry and function), whereas the subjective qualities form existential aspect of space (multisensory bodily experience, intuition, stories, movement, the passing of time). For analyzing, documenting and presenting the existential aspect of space I established and tested two concepts: Urban yoga project and Video method Ples. Ples is the acrostic of the four consecutive phases (P-rimary, L-atent, E-xperimental and S-ummary), as well as a Slovenian word for dance, which symbolizes the relationship between the architect and space.

Space potenital: Video method Ples, image: A.H.

Urban yoga project, a series of photos taken and are still to be taken in various metropolises around the world, is rediscovering the lost spatial sensuousness, a situation where city and body are in constant interaction and are thus mutually supplementing and defining each other. I believe that for as long as our bodies will relate to the real space, as the heart relates to organism, cities will remain, citizens will survive, and as for the architecture – it will continue to exist and work as architecture.

Space potential: Urban yoga New York City, photo: Jaka Vinšek

Working for versatile, proactive and extremely productive Ecosistema Urbano Arquitectos is utmost exciting and fun, eagerly awaiting each new project to come.

The boundary between public and private is shifting. The one between personal and professional is becoming increasingly blurred. This rapid evolution has led us to conceive and experience physical space differently than in the past. Real-time connectivity, ubiquity, unlimited access to large flows of information and knowledge, have also altered the way we relate to and work with each other. However, despite those rapid social and technological changes, city planning processes worldwide remain dull, bureaucratic and insensitive to how humans experience the city.

This studio will bring an alternative to the traditional way of designing cities from a bird’s eye view, and a single designer’s perspective. It will not only examine the physical dimension of the city, but also its social processes and fluxes.

Students will be encouraged to use this data to develop individual and collective initiatives that generate spontaneous transformations and set up conditions for change instead of delivering a completely finished product.

In a connected world, an urban design should be the result of an open and multilayered network of creative designers, technical experts, citizens and stakeholders. The studio will challenge the students to develop designs that reconcile the existing physical conditions—that respond to lifestyles from the past—with the emerging needs of the citizens through network design thinking.

We will also explore the new role of a designer as an activator, mediator and curator of social processes in a networked reality in which citizens have shifted from being passive receivers or consumers to active producers or prosumers.

Main topics will include: communication and information technology, open data, mobility, open source, transparency/mapping, activism, design thinking and environment awareness.

01 What? Urbanism is the mirror where other aspects of society and layers of information reflect. Architects, Sociologists, economists, geographers, seem to be cloistered in their specificconceptual worlds and focus on developing only certain aspects of the problem linked to their interests and profession:

We believe that in today’s connected world, an urban design should be the result of an openand multilayered network of creative designers, technical experts, citizens andstakeholders, combining design with data, needs, inputs. As David Harvey states in his article The Right to the City:

“The right to the city is not merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right tochange it after our heart’s desire”

Within this new context, it is necessary to explore the new role of the designer as an activator,mediator and curator of social processes in a networked reality in which citizens haveshifted from being passive receivers or consumers to active producers or prosumers:

In addition, Internet is the “space” where the most successful models of collective creationand self-organization are taking place. Internet is the most democratic space, the platformwhere every citizen can express him/herself freely and horizontally, the space where ideasflow in every direction.This studio will bring an alternative to the traditional way of designing cities from a bird’s eyeview, and a single designer’s perspective. It will, not only examine the physical dimension of the city, but also its social processes.Students will be challenged to develop designs that reconcile the existing physical conditions-that respond to lifestyles from the past- with the emerging needs of the citizens throughnetwork design thinking.

02 How? In contrast with a more traditional way of teaching in which information goes unidirectionally from ‘knowledge-owners’ to ‘knowledge receivers’. We do apply the concepts of active learning, which focuses the responsibility of learning, on learners; learning by doing, an active constructive learning process, and networked learning, a process of developing and maintaining connections with people, information and communicating in such a way so as to support one another’s learning. The central term in this definition is connections. Connections among students as well as connections between students and information:

We will become a networked group using a studio Twitter network for sharing knowledge,experiences, references and comments throughout the whole process.

This course is for active, curious, versatile, open minded and creative people regardless their previous background, experience or computer skills.

We understand our role as designers is challenging since one has to overcome all kind of obstacles. So we want to make of this studio a training experience.

You could either be a MacGyver type of personality, being able to implement amazing devices from a piece of cardboard, a chip and chewing gum; or a computer geeky updated version of NEO in the movie Matrix, working on his own individually in a room but actively connected to the network community. You are all welcome.

From all the possible /fascinating cities worldwide, we decided to explore the city that surrounds us: Boston.

04 Where? Students will be encouraged to explore and discover its community, economy, social networks, environmental challenges, digital layer, physical infrastructure, public space, and more. Creating connections and links between existing initiatives and their own projects.

Instead of experiencing just the physical sphere of the city, we will arrange an anthropological tour to meet interesting professionals who are dealing with urban issues in different ways and by different means. This will give us a different perception of Boston, revealing layers which are currently invisible to us.

05 When? Instead of air-commuting, parachuting and landing every two weeks, we decided to camp this time. We will be based in Boston to share the experience with you and make the most out of it, so we will be available every week with studio meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There will be both collective and individual sessions.

In addition the group will be real-time connected with Twitter.

06 So what? Outcomes from our different teaching experiences are diverse: from socially engaged projects working with the community to designing a responsive interactive façade and building a prototype of it. From working with Arduino electronics, to instantly transforming a deprived corner of the city by hand work getting new reactions from people.

From creating a digital interface to enhance community networking to building a mobile kitchen as a catalyst for the activation of a central city square.Spain, Norway, Denmark, France, Italy, Bahrein, US … different environments and different cultures but always a lot of shared energy and enthusiasm. We are very happy to say that some of these projects developed within the studios grew beyond the academic boundaries becoming professional investigations and businesses:

ecosistema urbano is a Madrid based group of architects and urban designers operating within the fields of urbanism, architecture, engineering and sociology. We define our approach as urban social design by which we understand the design of environments, spaces and dynamics in order to improve self-organization of citizens, social interaction within communities and their relationship with the environment. We have used this philosophy to design and implement projects in Norway, Denmark, Spain, Italy, France and China.We have a background in architecture and urban design and we build buildings, we organize demonstrations, we design urban strategies, working in both the physical and digital spheres. We are currently exploring new ways of engaging citizens into urban design matters.

DREAM YOUR CITY is our latest project, developed for the city of Hamar in Norway. It was officially presented short before at the opening of the Biennale of Architecture in Venice:

We hope you enjoy it and get some inspiration for the Fall! We are thrilled to be back here at the GSD and we are looking forward to start!

Today we are very glad to introduce you to Marta Battistella, one of our most recent collaborators.

Marta is a graduate student at 4Cities, a European master in urban studies which takes students to Brussels, Vienna, Copenhagen and Madrid. Previously, she also studied visual arts and theater in Venice and landscape design in Vienna.

To the question “Where are you from?”, her answer is both open and precise: 30% from Este, 30% from Venezia, 20% from Wien, 5% from Modena, 5% from Bruxelles, 5% from København and 5% from Madrid.

She is mainly interested, among other topics, in cultural theory related to urbanism and public spaces, landscapes, contemporary dance and photography. A wide and rich profile that brings new approaches and perspectives to the agency, so we are sure we will be sharing interesting debates and experiences with her at work during her internship.

On August 29th, Van Alen Institute and Environmental Defense Fund will host a roundtable discussion at the Venice Biennale US Pavilion to explore the environmental challenges faced by coastal cities throughout the world.

Titled Project Eco-Delta, the initiative is part of VAI and EDF’s ongoing collaboration in developing design strategies for the landscape surrounding New Orleans—the Mississippi River’s coastal delta. The forum will feature leading experts from the fields of design, engineering, public policy and environmental science, who will discuss innovative ways with which we can address the needs of fragile deltas and the communities living in them.

After our installation at the Venice Biennale (“10 things we have learned from the city”) we keep doing some research on anaglyph images. This time we are preparing an exhibition on the Ecoboulevard that will take place in February at the Le Sommer Environnement Gallery in Paris. Here we bring you two examples of the work in process. Try them aout! (f you happen to have a pair of 3D glasses in hand)

Quite often grand cultural events, as the Architecture Biennale is, cross the city of Venice in a such imposing manner, rarely interacting with what stays out of the exhibition path. This applies to the citizens (inhabitants, students, workers) and also to the professionals and the artists officially invited.